Unlike the room Tom and I shared, which could’ve won awards for its messiness, theirs was as neat and orderly as only a girls’ dorm room could be. Lena’s side was a riot of color, big pillows and bright tapestries, the shut laptop on the desk covered in stickers. She had photos of young Cary Grant pinned to her corkboard, nestled between song lyrics that she’d copied out onto sticky notes. She’d left her keys on the desk. More or less what I’d expected.
I was much more interested in Holmes’s side, but it seemed that she had scrubbed all traces of herself from her room, saving her brilliant oddness for Sciences 442. Her desk was bare and clean, except for a digital clock, and the corkboard above boasted a single bright-blue Post-it that read luv u girlie xo Lena and had curled a bit with age. (That Holmes had left it up that long was surprisingly endearing.) On the shelf above her bed, her textbooks were all in a neat line, and on the bed itself was a navy coverlet—and below that was a sleeping Charlotte Holmes, wig askew, mascara already beginning to rub off below her eyes.
I shut the door softly behind me. “Holmes,” I whispered, and before I could say it again, she sat up like a shot had gone off.
“Watson,” she croaked, and reached blindly for her clock. “I just meant to lie down for a moment.”
“It’s fine,” I said, sitting at the edge of her bed. “You’re probably still catching up on sleep. It’s not healthy to go three days without it, you’ll start hallucinating.”
“Yes, but the hallucinations are always fascinating.” She stacked her pillows behind her back. “So?” she asked, in a Why are you here voice.
“So,” I said, “how did it go? Did you learn anything? Who were you targeting?”
She heaved a sigh, pulling off her wig and stocking cap. “Watson,” she said again, “really.”
“I’m a murder suspect too,” I reminded her, “and I thought we were partners in this. You dress up in this whole ridiculous thing and then you don’t tell me how it went? Spill.”
“I didn’t learn anything. Anything at all. I must’ve spoken to at least fifteen first-year male students—statistically, murderers are more often men, and anyway Hailey is useless with girls, they generally want to drown her in the nearest river—and none of them showed the slightest sign of being responsible.” She said it all in a rush, like she wanted to expel it from her system. “And I’m starving. I’m never starving. I ate yesterday.”
“You had to have learned something,” I said, choosing to ignore that last part. In my short experience with her, Holmes had treated her body like an inconvenience, at best, and at the worst of times like an appendage she was actively trying to destroy.
“No,” she said petulantly. “It was an utter waste of my time, and I used the last of my Forever Ever Cotton Candy perfume to do it. Which means I have to order more, and they only sell it on the Japanese eBay, and it’s not cheap for something that smells that foul. And God, the humiliation of getting those boxes in the post.” She stuck a hand under her pillow, producing a trio of wallets. “I was mad enough to pick three of their pockets, which should at least cover the cost, if not the emotional damage.”
“Holmes,” I said slowly, taking one from her. The wallet itself was worth more than my mother’s flat, and it was stuffed with cash. “You can’t do that. We have to give these back.”
She cocked an eyebrow at me. “These were the ones who tried to get me drunk so they could have their sordid way with me.”
“Well then.” I pulled out five twenty-dollar bills and tossed them on the bed. “That’s more than enough for your perfume. Do you know what we’re going to do with the rest?”
“Give it all back to appease your sudden fit of conscience?”
“No,” I said. “There’s a car key on Lena’s ring. We’re going out for midnight breakfast. And then giving the rest to, like, charity.”
“I’LL HAVE TOAST,” HOLMES TOLD THE WAITER, HANDING HIM her menu. “Two pieces, whole wheat. No butter, no jam.”
“No, she’ll have the silver dollar special, with her eggs sunny-side up and . . . bacon, instead of sausage.” I fixed her with a scathing look. “Unless there’s something else on the menu she’d rather have. That isn’t under ‘side orders.’”
She snorted. “Right, then. He’ll be having the same thing, except he wants sausage, not bacon, and please do keep on giving him decaf instead of regular. It’s a mistake on your part, but it works to my advantage. He’s quite cranky when he doesn’t sleep.”
The waiter scribbled down our orders. “Happy fiftieth anniversary,” he muttered, and moved on to the next table.
“Ignore him. He hasn’t had a girlfriend in three years,” Holmes said. “Did you see his shoes? White laces. That alone should tell you.”